by A D Swanston
The man beside the earl, shorter and heavier and red of face, wore a plain dark blue doublet and hose, as if he did not want to be accused of trying to compete with the earl. His narrow eyes were blue and his short beard streaked with grey. His hands were clasped behind his back.
Leicester spoke first. ‘Here you are at last, Dr Radcliff,’ he said, tossing a coin he was inspecting on to the table. ‘We await you.’ In both words and tone his impatience was plain. The man beside him picked up the coin and put it carefully in the box to his right.
‘My humble apologies, my lord. I came at once but the streets are icy and delayed me a little.’
Leicester’s black eyes bored into his. ‘Yet they did not delay me. I have much to occupy me today and no time to waste. Did Wetherby not impress upon you the urgency of the matter?’
‘He did indeed, my lord, and I came with all speed.’
Leicester sighed. ‘I do not altogether believe you but you are here now. Mr Martin, this is Dr Radcliff, of whom I spoke. Dr Radcliff, Richard Martin is a senior member of the Goldsmiths’ Company and Warden of the Royal Mint.’
Again Christopher bowed. ‘Mr Martin. Your name is known to me.’
Martin smiled. ‘As yours is to me, Dr Radcliff.’
‘Let us proceed without further delay,’ said the earl. ‘Her Majesty wishes to discuss arrangements for next year’s progress to Kenilworth and I must return directly to Whitehall.’ As Master of the Queen’s Horse, Leicester was responsible for every detail of the royal progresses from agreeing the prices of bread and meat to the exact route they would take and the standard of the entertainment. Her Majesty was fond of bear-baiting but woe betide the wretch who produced mastiffs of insufficient ferocity. Progresses were thought essential to the good governance of the country and could involve over a thousand people. The task occupied much of Leicester’s time and could render him very short-tempered. Christopher had learned to tread carefully when the earl was fretting about stabling for the horses or clean bed linen for the queen’s ladies.
Martin waved a hand over the table. ‘Here are four boxes, each containing silver testons. Those in two of the boxes were minted in one of our eight mints, those in the other two were not.’ He took a coin from the first box and examined it by the light of a candle. ‘This one was not.’ He handed the coin to Christopher, took another from a second box and put it in one of the shallow cups suspended on the balance. The balance arm dropped with its weight. ‘If you put your coin in the other cup, Dr Radcliff, you will see the difference.’ Christopher did so. The balance arm fell but remained well above its counterpart. ‘There, you see: two testons, one almost pure silver, the other counterfeit and much contaminated by copper.’ He removed both coins and handed the lighter one to Christopher. ‘Hold it to the light and you will discern a reddening on the face.’
Christopher did so. ‘I recall the slogan that appeared on walls and in news sheets when I was a pupil,’ he replied. ‘Beware the coin of reddish face, not silver pure but metal base, was it not?’
Martin’s eyebrows rose. ‘It was indeed, doctor. Your memory serves you well. On account of your legal training, no doubt.’
‘Thank you, Mr Martin.’ Thanks to Wetherby he was prepared for something like this.
‘So there we have two coins, one genuine, the other counterfeit.’ Martin took a coin from the third box. ‘And, of course, thanks to Her gracious Majesty’s efforts to stabilize our coinage, we also have another perfectly legal teston but one with little more than half the value of the first.’ He asked Christopher to put his coin back on the balance and then did the same with the one in his hand. Again the balance dropped but not as much as it had the first time. ‘A better teston and a worse one.’
Christopher could not see where this was going. Since the revaluation of the coinage twelve years earlier, the value of purer testons had been established at 4¼ pence and that of the more contaminated at 2¼ pence, about the difference in the prices of a loaf of bread and a goose. Every trader in the country knew this.
The distinction had not come without its problems – particularly in the markets where buyers and sellers had at first disagreed on the value of a coin or the accuracy of a trader’s scales, but the queen had brought over skilled German minters to improve and standardize the quality of the currency from gold sovereigns and angels down to silver crowns and testons, and, now, the better teston was marked with a portcullis, the worse with a greyhound.
‘But they have been with us since the proclamation of 1562, Mr Martin. Are they now a matter of concern? Has there been a new outbreak of coining?’ he asked, trying to keep the impatience out of his voice.
‘I fear that there has,’ replied Leicester, before Martin could speak, ‘but coining of a new and yet more insidious kind.’
‘How so, my lord?’
Leicester signalled to Martin, who took a coin from the fourth box and handed it to Christopher. ‘This coin and others like it were passed to us by traders who had carelessly accepted them as payment in the markets. So far there have not been many but even a handful are worrying.’
Christopher turned the coin over in his hand. One face was stamped not with a greyhound or a portcullis but with a bear on one side and a ragged staff on the other. This Wetherby had not mentioned. He looked up sharply. ‘But the bear and staff is your family emblem, my lord.’ An emblem that adorned every room and almost every item of furniture in Kenilworth Castle, as well as Christopher’s lute. Martin’s demonstration had been no more than a preamble to this. No wonder the earl’s mood was less than sweet.
‘Indeed it is. The coiner has seen fit to replace the queen’s likeness and the proper mark with my family crest. And the coiner is a man of some skill. See how well made the coin is and how clear the stamps. Her Majesty has been shown one of these and, not unnaturally, is shocked and angry. I have given her my word that I will discover the source of this treason without delay and put an end to it. And so I shall. It is not so much a counterfeit as an act of desecration.’
The words were out of Christopher’s mouth before he could stop them. ‘May I take it, my lord, that you mean it is I who will discover the source?’
Leicester stared at him, his dark eyes narrowed. ‘Take care, doctor. This is no time for levity.’
Christopher swallowed and bowed his head. ‘My apologies, my lord. I am not myself after witnessing an old woman burned at the stake for causing death by witchcraft yesterday. The spectacle has unsettled me.’
‘Be that as it may, the matter of this false coinage is one of the utmost gravity, a deliberate insult to Her Majesty, to my family, to the country, and to me. Coining is an attempt to debase not only our currency but our monarchy. Not thirty years ago the country came close to anarchy caused in large part by our debased coinage and the role it played in fomenting unrest. Markets closed, coiners abounded, poor men starved and many died. I was with my father and brother at Norwich when the rebels led by the traitor Robert Kett were defeated. It was a cruel time.’ He shook his head as if to banish an image from his mind. ‘The bloodshed – of good men and bad – was almost beyond belief. I trust never to see the like again.’ He took another teston from the box and held it up. ‘This must be dealt with forthwith before dangerous discourse of our coinage and of these abominations surfaces once more.’ He paused briefly. ‘And in any event witchcraft in all its forms must be stamped out. If burning is the way to do so, so be it. I have no time for squeamishness in such matters and neither should you. Put it from your mind.’
From Leicester’s tone Christopher knew that he had gone too far. ‘Again, my lord, I crave your pardon. In what way may I be of service in the discovery of these coiners?’
‘You can start by visiting the Royal Mint at the Tower. Mr Martin will explain more to you about the process of minting there.’ Leicester glanced at Martin, who nodded his agreement. ‘From there various avenues of inquiry will doubtless present themselves. I recall that among your agents there
is a Jew operating from Fleet Street. A goldsmith. Perhaps he can shed light on the matter. But remember, discretion is vital. Here we have a blatant attempt to blacken the Dudley name. The felons must be caught and punished before word spreads.’
Although the earl spoke, as was his custom, quietly, the force of his words was unmistakable. It would be difficult to think of anything less likely to endear him to the queen than the substitution of his emblem for her own on coin of the realm. Nor would her displeasure be the worst of it. For Leicester’s enemies awaiting their chance to strike, the coining would be a godsend. Christopher Hatton would dance himself silly.
‘If you present yourself at the Royal Mint tomorrow at midday, Dr Radcliff,’ said Martin, ‘I shall be happy to show you its workings and to discuss the matter further with you.’
‘Tomorrow, sir. You may expect me.’
‘That is settled,’ said Leicester. ‘Now I shall return to Whitehall Palace. Dr Radcliff, report to me the minute you have news.’ He took a false teston from the table and tossed it to Christopher. ‘Take that. You might find it useful. But do not attempt to spend it.’
Christopher caught the coin. His ill humour had caused him to overstep the mark of civility – a mark the earl held dear – and he was glad to be dismissed. Katherine had told him to return straight to Ludgate Hill, but she would have to wait. And so would the lute.
Usually a heaving throng of beasts and beggars and men and women about their daily business, Fleet Street that morning was quiet. Even the shivering wretch with his ears nailed to the stocks on the corner of Whitefriars was spared the usual barrage of rotting food and muck. Christopher had to brush off but a few ragged urchins and avoid the pure collectors with their evil-smelling carts. The cold had kept traders in their beds and horses in their stables. He walked as briskly as the icy street would allow, past the shop of the garrulous barber and as far as an unmarked door beside a printing house about halfway along the street. While others had stayed at home, Isaac Cardoza, goldsmith, would surely be at work.
Isaac, a Marrano Jew, loved above all else to talk and had told Christopher much about his family and their desperate escape fifty years earlier from the Portuguese inquisition. While many Marranos had settled in Paris or Copenhagen, Isaac’s family had reached London and had settled into the small Jewish community centred on Leadenhall market. Now his business thrived among the goldsmiths of Fleet Street.
They had spoken often of the same intolerance that had forced the Jews from their homes in Portugal and Spain and was driving Catholics out of England and Protestants out of France. Isaac liked to ask why. ‘While you Christians fight amongst yourselves, we Jews are happy to share a country with anyone and we never seek to proselytize, yet we are looked down upon wherever we go. Why is that, my friend?’ he would ask. Christopher had no answer.
Unlike some Marranos, who had converted to Christianity to avoid persecution, the Cardozas continued to practise their faith in private. If the Church or the law suspected this, they turned a blind eye to it. The Marranos were valued for their business sense and for the useful intelligence they brought back from their travels to France and the Low Countries. Witches might burn, Catholic priests might hang, but the Marranos were tolerated. Without their help, the traitor John Berwick might never have been caught and hanged and Christopher would not now be the Earl of Leicester’s chief intelligencer in London.
Isaac was sitting at his weighing table, a pair of thick spectacles perched on his nose, examining a silver spoon by the light of six wax candles. The goldsmith prided himself on never spending an unnecessary coin but did eschew cheaper tallow candles, which gave off such a noxious odour. He reckoned that he recovered the extra cost in the higher prices he could extract from customers whose noses were not assailed by the smell of burning animal fat. When he looked up and saw who his visitor was, a crooked smile lit up his wrinkled face. ‘Christopher, my friend, I wish you joy. It has been too long. Forgive my not rising – my back aches from this infernal cold. See how my hand shakes.’
Christopher took the outstretched hand in his and held it firmly enough to stop the shaking. ‘At least it is not as bent as a meat hook, Isaac, and when the spring comes, your hand will be warm but mine will still be like this.’ He held it up for Isaac to see. The fingers were bent inwards and almost touching his palm.
‘It has worsened since last I saw you. Has no apothecary been able to help?’
‘No, nor doctor nor surgeon nor mixer of magic potions. I have tired of handing over money to quacks and charlatans and have determined to let nature take her course. No more expensive, useless remedies for me.’
‘Wise, no doubt. We Jews hate handing over hard-earned coins without good reason. But you have not come to talk of medical matters, Christopher, nor, I think, of money. What can I do for you?’
Christopher pulled up a plain pine stool and sat opposite the goldsmith. ‘As chance would have it, Isaac, it is indeed about money that I have come. That and the pleasure of seeing you. How do your family fare?’
‘Well, thank you. I thank God for the children. They make our days worthwhile. And Mistress Allington – not yet persuaded to marriage?’
Christopher laughed. ‘Not yet, nor ever, I fancy, hard though I have tried. She still harbours notions of my returning to Cambridge as a Fellow of Pembroke Hall, despite the foolishness of it. Marriage of course would make that impossible.’ He took the counterfeit teston from his purse and placed it on the table between them. ‘It is about this that I have come.’
Isaac picked the coin up and peered at one face. Then, as Christopher had, he turned it over and looked up in surprise. ‘Christopher, my friend, do you know what this is?’
‘It is the emblem of the Dudley family. The bear and ragged staff.’
‘Indeed, but the story behind it, do you know that?’
‘I did not know there was a story.’
‘It is newly minted and well made. Did the earl give it to you?’
‘He did, and instructed me to find its source.’
‘He told you no more?’
‘No.’
‘So you need my help.’
Christopher nodded. ‘I do. I must discover how and why and by whom this coin was made and do so without asking questions that might give rise to alarm. Can you offer any advice on how I am to do this, my friend?’
Isaac scratched at his red beard. ‘I do not like this coin and for any but you I would refuse. Merely holding it in my hand makes me uneasy. I imagine that Warden Martin knows about this?’
‘He does, and I shall visit the mint tomorrow.’
‘Then I suggest you ask Martin to share with you what he knows about it and its marks. It is new but its story is old.’
‘Will you not tell me the story, Isaac?’
Isaac shook his head. ‘No, my friend, better that it should come from the warden. If you wish, however, I will speak quietly to one or two trusted friends. Something might emerge.’
‘Very well, Isaac. One or two, but no more, please. The earl was most insistent on the importance of secrecy.’
‘That is no surprise. This coin must be a great embarrassment to the Dudley family and it might just as well have the word “treason” stamped upon it. You are too young but I remember the time when it first appeared. It was a bad time, one that men of peace do not want to see repeated.’
‘Yet you will not speak to me about it.’
‘I will not. We Jews are a superstitious race but rest assured that I shall be careful, and so must you. Call again in a few days.’ Isaac put the coin in his purse. ‘Shalom, Christopher. Take care.’
‘Shalom, Isaac. Go well and send blessings to your family.’
What was the story behind the coin and why would Isaac not say more? And why, for that matter, had Leicester not said more? Finding the coiner would not be made easier by the earl not sharing intelligence.
Katherine was sitting in the little parlour he used as a study. He threw his
coat over a chair and warmed his hands at the fire. ‘It is bitter cold and snow is falling,’ he said. ‘A day for wise virgins to stay at home.’ When Katherine did not respond, he straightened up and turned to her. ‘But since you are neither wise nor a virgin, I expect you will be wanting to return to Wood Street.’
She ignored the jibe. ‘You have been gone a long time, Christopher. Did the earl detain you or did you see fit to visit your whore? Is she to assist you in your work, while I may not?’ In her voice there was no trace of humour.
Caught unawares, Christopher snapped, ‘God’s mercy, woman, what has brought this on? My day has been difficult enough without this carping. Can you not accept that Ell Cole is a valuable intelligencer and that she is not my whore?’
‘So you have visited her.’
‘I have not. I have been to Goldsmiths’ Hall where I found the Earl of Leicester in impatient mood, and thence to Fleet Street to speak to Isaac Cardoza. He wishes you well. Now, for the love of God, may we talk of something else?’
For a minute Katherine was silent. Then she rose from her chair and embraced him. ‘I am sorry, Christopher. It is sitting idly by while you are about the earl’s work. I hate it. Can I not assist in some way?’
‘In what way?’
‘You could begin by telling me what you learned at Goldsmiths’ Hall.’
Christopher pushed her gently away. ‘I am sworn to silence and, even if I were not, have you forgotten how close to death you were at the hands of John Berwick when you last assisted me? He would have sliced open your throat without a moment’s pause.’
Katherine frowned. ‘Berwick is dead. I saw that evil traitor at the end of a rope with my own eyes. And have you forgotten who it was that persuaded Ursula Walsingham to speak to the earl for you when you were under suspicion and held prisoner in this very house?’